How the Berlin Affordable Housing Crisis Might Go

This is my particular scenario.

Right now in Berlin, the affordable housing crisis is probably deemed topic number one among locals.  Because of this....various groups with political agendas have gone at the idea of seizing apartment buildings owned by companies, then put into some effect....a controlled rent regulation (none existing at this point).

The chief problem with this grab-and-go scenario?  German law dictates if you seize property, you have to offer compensation.  The current amount being discussed?  If they went for the amount of property being talked about, it's valued at between 18-and-35 billion Euro.  The holders of the property suggest the higher number, and the 'grabbers' are suggesting the 18-billion number.  My humble guess is that judges would find that the final number would be near 30-billion Euro (roughly 40-billion US dollars).

Where would the money come from?  That's the real question to ask.

I suspect that the city political folks pushing this agenda....want the German federal government to provide a two-stage solution....just giving them 10-billion Euro (outright), and loaning them at zero-percent interest the remaining 20-odd billion Euro. 

But if you sit and think about this scenario for a while, there's this problem.  This would entangle the federal government to come and solve at least a dozen other cities with the same identical problem, and maybe another lesser cities.  All total, you could be talking about 200 billion Euro having to come out of thin air.  The smaller towns and cities in Germany seeing this as 'fair'?  No....they'd be fairly hostile over the gimmick, and the cost to the public.

Could the cities themselves come up with the money?  To some degree, yes....but they'd have to gauge the rent upwards, to make up the mortgage payments back to the banks, and that would irk the public a good bit.

So as you ponder this whole game....are we setting this up to be a political mess, and inventing a financial crisis over the next decade?  The more that one thinks about this dilemma and the whole way that the public is charged up.....the answer is yes.

I sat and noticed today a comment by a leading Green Party individual....who suggested that retirees ought to be 'helped' in some way.  He suggested that retirees are often living in apartments too big for them, or too expensive, and that they ought to be a government program to move them.  He didn't say it in a direct way, but the hint was that they might need to be moved to lesser cities (out of Hamburg or Berlin).  Retirees being agreeable to this?  I doubt it. 

So stand by and enjoy the discussion.